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So, now it's common knowledge that the 34s can use 3TB & 4TB drives. My question is, what happens if the 34 fails and you have close to 3TBs of content stored on it? At the moment, you lose it!

Once again I ask for some support in our seemingly never ending quest to have D* authorize any HR within an account to read the HDDs recorded by any HR within that account.

Seems like a logical step forward, doesn't it? Seemed like it years ago when I started my first thread on this subject, too. Logic doesn't seem to have much of an impact on D*.

Now, things have changed. The 34s are on the scene and others of that ilk will follow. Some of the members are already running 3TB externals. Personally, I wouldn't do it because of the "marriage" of HR to its HDD. Bad enough to lose 2TBs of content. Can't imagine the frustration of losing much more content than that.

What can we do except raise our voices to D* and get this changed? If this thread gets enough support, perhaps D* will finally do the right thing. This is more important (I think) than DLBs or even the HD GUI.

I was offered a 34 without charge a couple weeks ago. The CSR could not believe that I wouldn't take it. When I explained to him what happens when an HR, any HR, goes bad, he understood my reasoning.

What do YOU think? Please give this some thought, it can't be that difficult to do. And it should be done with every HR, not just the 34s, I think.

I was offered a 34 without charge a couple weeks ago. The CSR could not believe that I wouldn't take it. When I explained to him what happens when an HR, any HR, goes bad, he understood my reasoning.

I think you missed out on a good deal. You have large drives already on your dual tuner DVRs, so I don't really see any difference.Having 5 tuners isn't going to change the reliability and for me, is a big plus over having them spread across twin HR24s.Sure I have everything in "one pot" over two, now but the trade-off is I don't have two chances of failure either. Yes if my 34 fails, I'm hosed. At the same time, I've had good luck since I got my first HR20 and haven't had a failure with any of mine since.

This whole matter is exactly why I won't use an external drive, or rely on any DirecTV DVR for archival storage. If I could marry a drive with any DVR on my account, and back up that drive, that would be another matter.

I view the hard drives in my DVRs as carrying the impermanence of flowers in the spring.

Rich, ask mods how to add a poll - it's possible for the thread. And I would slightly change the title - adding a keyword "RFI" - a request to implement the feature (account 'marriage') for DTV SW Dept.

It just show how dish is taking advantage of the feature for last few years starting from ViP622.

Every time this has come up, I've been told there weren't enough people using the eSATA function for this change to be authorized by D*. I dealt with it my way and have ensured that, barring a catastrophe, I won't lose any recordings. Now with the 34s and whatever follows, surely more folks will want to put much larger HDDs on them. I think the time has come for a change. I know Dish has this feature, it can't be that hard to do.

How can we force their hand? Don't accept a 34 until this change is authorized for all HRs. I won't accept one. Not that I don't want one, but I'm kinda tired of having 12 HRs just so I can back up everything I value several times.

While the ability to archive content so that it doesn't get "lost" during an HD DVR failure has been a long-standing desire by many people, there has been little movement in that direction. It's also one of the very few disappoints I've had with DirecTV service.

The alignment of one hard drive to one device, as opposed to being able to migrate storage at the account level (instead of the hardware level) is the main impediment.

I think you missed out on a good deal. You have large drives already on your dual tuner DVRs, so I don't really see any difference.

The deal is still there. That's not gonna change, they want me to reup and I'm not gonna do it until something changes drastically.

Having 5 tuners isn't going to change the reliability and for me, is a big plus over having them spread across twin HR24s.

And I've already got 24 tuners, don't really need any more, but I would like to "lighten the load".

Sure I have everything in "one pot" over two, now but the trade-off is I don't have two chances of failure either. Yes if my 34 fails, I'm hosed. At the same time, I've had good luck since I got my first HR20 and haven't had a failure with any of mine since.

I don't really think we should factor your experiences into this. I think you know more about this stuff than anyone on the forum does and you can deal with whatever happens in a way that most of us can't. In other words, if anyone's an "anomaly", you are, and that's a good thing for us. There's a vast difference between knowing what you know and what the average user knows.

While the ability to archive content so that it doesn't get "lost" during an HD DVR failure has been a long-standing desire by many people, there has been little movement in that direction. It's also one of the very few disappoints I've had with DirecTV service.

The alignment of one hard drive to one device, as opposed to being able to migrate storage at the account level (instead of the hardware level) is the main impediment.

I don't want to archive anything, I just want to be able to use the large HDDs on another HR within my account if an HR fails. My 20-700s are failing now and I've got four left with a 2TB on/in all of them. I already know I'm gonna lose all that content sooner or later.

Yup, we need a divorce lawyer to dissolve the "marriage" between the HR and its attendant hard drives.

Don't think anyone on this forum would ever consider you normal. I certainly don't....

I'm not against your idea.

I'm just trying to look at this:

What's the highest failure component?Isn't this the drive?

Not in my case. I've only lost a couple HDDs and I think blaming the HDDs is way overblown. I've had far more trouble with the HRs than the HDDs.

Cloning a drive or going to RAID would seem to be what would help this.

With larger drive supported, RAID would seem to be the option to use.

True, but that gets expensive. Two 3TB drives in one RAID enclosure would cost a lot. And as we both know money's kinda tight these days. I wouldn't spring for that. I did have two RAID setups running years ago and they both failed. One lasted 3 or 4 months and the other one ran for about a year and failed. Both RAID boxes cost me ~ $500.

That's what I'm afraid of, limiting the ability to just the 34s and whatever comes next. I'm not sure I'd support doing this and including the 20s, which are old and, at least in my case, failing and I think I'd also exclude the 21 series, thereby limiting it to the 24s and whatever follows the 34s. That should make it even easier for D* to do. Or would it? I don't know. Just a thought.

Rich

No, that would be bad limitation.Please do not push the idea.

Make it simple: moving an EHD in one account should include all compatible DVRs.

So, now it's common knowledge that the 34s can use 3TB & 4TB drives. My question is, what happens if the 34 fails and you have close to 3TBs of content stored on it? At the moment, you lose it! . . . .

Of the 20 million subscribers, let's say half are HD and have a DVR, or 10 million. Let's assume half of those just have one DVR and no external storage and would need no more than 500 GB back-up, which would mean they would need a total of 2.5 million TB of back-up. That takes care of half the customers for HD back-up on the DirecTV Cloud.

Of the other half, or 5 million customers, let's guess that half of those have two DVRs and again no external HD hooked up to their DVRs. They'd need a TB each to cover their two DVRs, or 5 million TB of back-up total.

We still have 2.5 million customers left. Let's say 1.5 million of those have some kind of external HD on their DVR(s) but are otherwise nomal users. We'll need 2 TB on average in the cloud to back them up. Add another 3 million TB to the total.

Finally, we are left with 1 million power users. They have either a lot of DVRs, a large amount of external HDs, or both. Let's give them 4 TB of back-up each, or a total of 4 million TB more.

That means DirecTV just needs to provide 14.5 million TB of back-up on the cloud to cover everyone.

Of the 20 million subscribers, let's say half are HD and have a DVR, or 10 million. Let's assume half of those just have one DVR and no external storage and would need no more than 500 GB back-up, which would mean they would need a total of 2.5 million TB of back-up. That takes care of half the customers for HD back-up on the DirecTV Cloud.

Of the other half, or 5 million customers, let's guess that half of those have two DVRs and again no external HD hooked up to their DVRs. They'd need a TB each to cover their two DVRs, or 5 million TB of back-up total.

We still have 2.5 million customers left. Let's say 1.5 million of those have some kind of external HD on their DVR(s) but are otherwise nomal users. We'll need 2 TB on average in the cloud to back them up. Add another 3 million TB to the total.

Finally, we are left with 1 million power users. They have either a lot of DVRs, a large amount of external HDs, or both. Let's give them 4 TB of back-up each, or a total of 4 million TB more.

That means DirecTV just needs to provide 14.5 million TB of back-up on the cloud to cover everyone.

No problem.

I don't think they need to store the same show over and over again for all their customer. I'm pretty sure just one will do.

Every time this has come up, I've been told there weren't enough people using the eSATA function for this change to be authorized by D*. I dealt with it my way and have ensured that, barring a catastrophe, I won't lose any recordings. Now with the 34s and whatever follows, surely more folks will want to put much larger HDDs on them. I think the time has come for a change. I know Dish has this feature, it can't be that hard to do.

How can we force their hand? Don't accept a 34 until this change is authorized for all HRs. I won't accept one. Not that I don't want one, but I'm kinda tired of having 12 HRs just so I can back up everything I value several times.

Rich

I'm guessing the amount of money you have spent on receiver fees, hard drives, and other parts of your setup you could have easily bought the box sets or blu rays of the movies you really want to keep.

Plus your logic is self defeating. If you continue to pay more money to get the same functionality then how does it hurt a company?

Cloning a drive or going to RAID would seem to be what would help this.

With larger drive supported, RAID would seem to be the option to use.

RAID is definitely the way to go to combat drive loss, and that's why I went RAID 5. However that's all null and void if the 34 itself fails. I realize that when a DVR fails the majority of the time it's because the hard drive failed but it would be nice if recordings were tied to accounts and not devices should the device fail for a reason other than drive failure.

I don't know about the cloud aspect, I just think that would be problematic. All we really need is the ability to plug an external drive into any DVR on the same account, and everything starts where it left off, all recordings accessible. And with no fee.

while you guys joyful dragging the thread off-topic, it would be reasonable to ask the sat providers (dtv, dish, etc) for a few kilobytes of account's storage to series, times, etc what many is redo manually after each quirk with a box